The entry from Dart today is an undated postcard with a hand drawn cartoon. In the upper left corner is an island labeled “Okinawa,” on the upper right is the Golden Gate Bridge. Between these two points sits the Haggard, with 555 clearly showing on her stern. There is a tiny row boat pulling the ship via the bow line. The sailor in the row boat is labeled “Me.”

Underneath, is the caption: “Dearest Dot: Does this remind you of a dream you told me about? Almost came true, didn’t it? Only I’m pulling the ship instead of vice versa. I love you.   Dart”

It doesn’t look like this postcard was ever mailed, but Mom found it in her scrapbook and included it in the collection of letters.

Dot’s letter begins by exclaiming about the extreme heat again. “My kingdom for a pool! Yeah, my kingdom for even a miserable little puddle! Guess we humans are never satisfied.”

She describes the source of her good mood as a “big fat, juicy letter from ‘the love of my life.'” She’s overjoyed that Frank Steinbrugge is alive and kicking after being declared dead, and hopes there are lots of cases like his that surface after the war is over.

She’s most enthusiastic about the prospect of Dart returning to the V-12 unit in the Navy. “I’d be so happy I’d burst. (Oh, what a gruesome mess that would make!) You can be sure I’ll be mighty religious about stepping on all the Luckies I see. ”

Nice to know that Burke follows in his brother’s footsteps in the brains department. She claims she finished 59th in a class of 60 at Andrews. “Yep, there is someone dumber ‘en me.” Nobody’s going to believe that this sharp cookie finished near the bottom of her class; least of all Dart!

Since he likes her snapshots so much, she’s tempted to snap a photo of how she looks tonight. She’s wearing her hair in two short pigtails tied up with white bows. “It may be the farthest thing from a glamourous hairdo, but at this point I’ve cast away all the glamour in preference to keeping cool.”

Once again she turns to reminiscing about their time together. “You weren’t the only one I surprised when I raced up the stairs into your arms. If I remember correctly, you kissed me four times after I said you needn’t ask my permission. That is, four times that night. How many times did you kiss me at the station the next day? That’s when I lost count.”

She sincerely hopes he doesn’t mind when she reminisces about their few dates together. She feels that those times are of mutual interest to both of them and it gives her chills to re-live them in her memory.

“You may have had a chance  to tell me a few things when the car stopped, but you didn’t. You jumped right out to see what was wrong. I remember watching you put the hood up, push back your sailor hat, and shake your head with disgust. Those policemen were awfully nice to give us a push.”

Gee, with all these memories they’ve been sharing through their letters lately, I feel almost as though I’d been on that date with them!

How she wishes she’d quit her job when she first had the idea. It is getting her nowhere. She thinks maybe she could start a beach school for children, taking different kids to the beach every day. There was some good news at work today. The store will close at 1:00 on Saturdays throughout the remainder of the summer, giving employees a little “sun time.”

Tonight she plans to write to his parents and beg them to take a trip to Greenwich this summer. She’d like them to meet her family and see Greenwich. That way they’ll see that Greenwich has nothing to offer but beautiful scenery.

“Speaking of dreams, (I wasn’t but you were in the letter I got today) what did you mean when you wrote in the letter of a few days ago that that dream of Nancy’s was no dream? I’m very curious. Wish I dared believe it meant you were on your way home. No such luck? Pretty soon? Maybe? Huh?” Wow, if only she knew that he was, at this very minute indeed heading “home” to the USA!

Tonight she is sitting for a “brood” of four children. This family, who has a great deal of money lives in a very fine, big house that “looks as though they lost everything they had in the Depression and haven’t gained it back yet. The house looks and smells as if nothing has been done to it in the way of cleaning for months. What a hole! Remind me of this place if our house ever looks ‘run down at the heels.’ I should think it would be loads of fun seeing how nice you could make a house look. Maybe I’ll toot a different tune after I’ve been keeping house for a while.” She assesses that the couple likes to spend their ample money where it will show the most; a grand house on the outside and ritzy private schools for their children.

It’s time to call it quits on the letter. She’s being bugged by too many bugs and would like to try and reduce their number by a few.